Opinion - News Analysis   

A damper amid the positives in Left Front politics

The Left Front has yet again reaffirmed its overall supremacy in rural West Bengal, but with the Trinamool Congress making significant political inroads into areas largely in the southern part of the State in the recent three-tier panchayat elections in 17 districts, much of the sheen of its success has seemingly been lost.

The results might have come as a damper to the Left Front, in power in the State for more than three decades, but Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee’s contention that “this is the beginning of the end” for the Left came across as an over-the-top and exaggerated reaction.

There is little denying the fact that relations within the Left Front have not been at their best for some time now. Leaders of some of its constituents have over the past months come out in the open to express their misgivings over being given short shrift and not being taken into confidence on critical policy issues at the State level.

The reverses suffered by the Left Front in a few districts cannot be attributed only to the failure of the local leadership of certain Left parties to arrive at an understanding on seat adjustments in some areas, though it might have ceded the advantage to the Opposition. More important, there was “political disunity” among certain partners that could have contributed to the electoral setbacks, Communist Party of India (Marxist) Central Committee member Benoy Konar noted.

The spotlight was on Nandigram and Singur during the polls, and the victory of the Trinamool Congress in both areas caught the attention of political commentators and leaders across the board.

The State government has insisted that the outcome would in no way put industrialisation, already high on its agenda, on the back-burner. The Left Front leadership has underscored the importance of taking the people into confidence in areas where new projects are to be set up. But Ms. Banerjee described her party’s success there as the people’s rejection of the State’s move to acquire fertile farmland for industry — a vindication of the agitations she had led there as part of her State-wide campaign on the contentious issue.

Nandigram continues to be a sore point for a State government still confronted by the ghosts of the violence that rocked the area sporadically for 11 successive months in 2007, even after Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee decided to call off the project for a chemical hub there early last year in the face of violent opposition by a section of the local population. What followed was a local turf war between the Trinamool Congress and the CPI(M) with an eye on the rural polls. Whether the parties shared a level playing ground in the run-up to the elections is another question.

Industries Minister Nirupam Sen has dismissed the demand to shift the Tata Motors project from Singur, raised by the local Trinamool Congress leadership in the wake of its victory there. Ms. Banerjee has not indicated her support to the demand overtly but has been demanding the return to peasants of land acquired for the project allegedly without their consent.

The Opposition’s argument that the defeat of the Left Front in both Singur and Nandigram is an indication of popular opposition to the State government’s industrial policy that might necessitate the acquisition of strips of mono-cropped farmland, does not hold water. This is evident in the runaway success of the Left parties in some other districts where new projects are to be set up. Biman Bose, chairman of the Left Front Committee, has pointed out that the Left parties have won in Bankura, Paschim Mednipur and Burdwan districts where 21,000 acres of land has been acquired for industrial purposes.

The fact remains, however, that the Trinamool Congress has made dents in areas where the Left has held sway over the past decades. Along with the Congress and other Opposition parties, it has combined to reduce the share of the Left Front in the panchayat samitis to 57 per cent, wrested three zilla parishads from it, and notched up many gains in the gram panchayats. Union Information and Broadcasting Minister Priya Ranjan Dasmunshi, who is the State Congress president, has revived hopes of a future alliance between his party and the Trinamool Congress — a suggestion that Ms. Banerjee had spurned earlier. But the poll outcome can easily change the posturing. It has “prepared the ground for an understanding between the Opposition forces, save the Bharatiya Janata Party, in the future,” Mr. Dasmunshi said. For Ms. Banerjee, “the winds of change have started blowing” in State politics.

This may be wishful thinking given the dominance of the Left in large swathes of the State, but the coming days will see Left leaders in a huddle reviewing the results and ascertaining the causes of the reversals. The wake-up alarm has gone off.

Veteran Marxist leader Jyoti Basu’s call prior to the polls for a regrouping and a reinforcement of unity among the Left Front constituents is bound to find echoes now. Mr. Bose, who is also the secretary of the CPI(M) State Committee, has emphasised the need to find out afresh, in the wake of the results, whether or not the Left Front has been able to safeguard the interests of the common people. It is imperative that its leaders go back to the people to employ patience to win back minds, he said.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Stories in this Section

Oh, these oil prices!
Here’s to a good monsoon
In a bind over soaring oil
Karnataka election 2008: issues and prospects
A damper amid the positives in Left Front politics
Corrections and clarifications
Oil prices
UPA scorecard
Unfortunate remarks
Globalising education
Nuclear deal
Tennis row
Sethusamudram

Copyright © 2008, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu